Many food products are provided in frozen or refrigerated ready-to-cook form and many such products have texturizers, such as bread crumbs, intended to provide appealing crispiness/crunchiness to the cooked products.
In many instances, their textural qualities are difficult to reach as a result of cost optimized yields; freeze-thaw abuse; frozen or refrigerated storage; food service holding practices, including warming cabinets, steam tables and heat lamps; and cooking methods, including humidity controlled ovens and microwave reheat.
RS4-type resistant starches are chemically-modified, highly-cross-linked starches, resistant to digestion by alpha-amylase and are widely used to provide dietary fibre to a wide variety of food products, such as bread, to provide a pre-biotic fibre source for gut health. These starches may be manufactured by procedures described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,855,946 and 6,299,903. Examples of RS4 resistant starches include Fibersym® (MGP), PenFibe™ RS (Penford Food Ingredients) and ActiStar® RT (Cargill) resistant starches.